Humans rely on memory at nearly every moment: we use our memories of the past to predict the future, and memory is essential to our concept of self. Nevertheless, our memory for the details of events is imperfect. Some details of an event are forgotten and other details can be falsely remembered. One other striking characteristic of memory is that that act of remembering can change what is being remembered: retrieving events from memory changes our memory of those individual events.

In this talk Professor Amy Criss, Head of Discipline of Psychology at Syracuse University and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow, will explain how the effects of retrieval on memory can be understood using carefully designed experiments, and show that the accuracy of memory for an event declines as we repeatedly recall that event. She will also discuss how theories of memory can be expressed as computational models, and how we can use computational models to understand how forgetting is caused by remembering.

Monday 19

18:00 - PUBLIC TALK - Maintaining a Healthy Heart: the Benefits of Exercise for Women

Although cardiovascular disease develops 7 to 10 years later in women than in men, it is still the major cause of death in women. Exercise and physical activity are a highly effective means of decreasing the risk of heart attack, stroke and dementia. These talks, presented by the School of Human Sciences (Exercise and Sport Science) and the Institute of Advanced Studies at UWA, will address questions related to the most appropriate types of exercise to impact on cardiovascular health and symptoms in women across the lifespan.

The risk of heart disease in women is often underestimated due to the misperception that females are ‘protected’ against cardiovascular disease. The under-recognition of heart disease and differences in clinical presentation in women lead to less aggressive treatment strategies and a lower representation of women in clinical trials. Understanding the role of risk factors and the pathophysiology of ischemic heart disease in women will contribute to in a better prevention of cardiovascular events.

Exercise for the Management of the Menopause - a talk by Professor Helen Jones, Cardiovascular Exercise Physiologist, Liverpool John Moores University.

The menopause is a significant life event that is characterised by a reduction in the hormone oestrogen. The impact of this oestrogen reduction on health and everyday life is huge. The menopausal transition, which lasts 1-5 yrs, is associated with an increase in cardiovascular disease risk. Nevertheless, the primary symptom of the menopause is hot flushes which affects everyday life of the women considerably. This talk will outline how improving fitness with exercising training has a positive impact on improving menopausal symptoms, blood vessel and skeletal muscle health, all of which contribute to reducing cardiovascular disease risk, even if the exercise training begins during the menopausal transition. Finally, the talk will make recommendations for females exercising during the menopausal transition.

Join two outstanding female leaders as they share the motivations, challenges and achievements of their life in activism.

Christine Milne was the leader of the Australian Greens from 2013 to 2015. She is now the Global Greens Ambassador. Her political biography, 'An Activist Life', is the story of a high-school English teacher from northwest Tasmania who became a fiery environmental warrior, pitted against some of the most powerful business and political forces in the country.

Professor Fiona Stanley AC, FAA, FASSA is the Founding Director and Patron of the Telethon Kids Institute, Director, ANDI (Australian National Development Index) at the University of Melbourne and a spokesperson for the Climate Council, Doctors for the Environment Australia and 350.org, on the health effects of climate change. For her research on behalf of Australia's children and Aboriginal social justice, Fiona was named Australian of the Year in 2003.

Following the conversation, there will be an opportunity to purchase Christine Milne's book and ask her to sign your copy.

This event is presented by: UWA Institute of Advanced Studies, Boffins Bookshop and the Greens WA.

18:00 - PUBLIC TALK - Personality, Values, Culture, Evolution – why are we similar and yet so different? : Public lecture by Ronald Fischer, Center for Applied Cross-Cultural Research, Victoria University of Wellington

Humans are complex social beings. Curious observers through the ages have noted the dramatic differences in human behaviour around the world. How similar or different are our personalities? To understand human behaviour, an integrated perspective is required – one which considers both what we regularly do (our personality traits) and what motivates us (our values). Traits and values have been studied separately in psychology and related disciplines, yet, what we do (our traits) must somehow be related to what we hold dearly (our values). Furthermore, how can we make sense of both the proposed similarities and differences in personality and values that have been reported by travellers, philosophers and more recently in large survey studies?

In this talk, Professor Fischer, Co-Director of the Center for Applied Cross-Cultural Research at Victoria University of Wellington and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow, will use an evolutionary perspective to address these challenging questions. He will present an integration of personality and human values into a functional framework that highlights how both psychological processes are driven by mechanisms in our brains and related to our genes. Equipped with these insights, he will then tackle why we sometimes encounter different personalities and values in some parts of the world, but also debunks the myth of large cultural differences in personality. Deep down, we are all similar and an evolutionary perspective can tell us when, where and why we may behave and value things differently. He will present a gene-culture coevolution model of personality and values that shows how genes, economics, social conditions, and climate jointly shape personality. Finally, he will provide some examples that can help people to reflect on who they are and what makes us all so fascinatingly similar, and yet different.

It is generally understood that exercise and physical activity are important lifestyle factors that maintain the health of your heart and arteries and decrease the risk of the most prevalent and debilitating diseases in the Western World, namely heart disease, stroke and dementia. But distinct “doses” and types of exercise impact the benefits derived - and there may even be a risk in overdoing it.

These talks, presented by the School of Human Sciences (Exercise and Sport Science) and the Institute of Advanced Studies at UWA, will address the relative risk and benefits of exercise across the lifespan.

Exercise and the heart: can you overdose? - a public talk by Professor Keith George, Associate Dean for Research, Scholarship and Knowledge Transfer (Faculty of Science) Liverpool John Moores University.

The cardiovascular benefits of exercise are well known to nearly all of the global population. Indeed some have called exercise the cardiovascular “polydrug”. If you could wrap exercise up into a pill you would makes billions of dollars and likely win a Nobel Prize. But - if exercise were a drug it would be required to go through multiple levels of trials related to safety and efficacy – there is no FDA process for exercise. Within this process we would ask questions like; (1) is there a linear dose-response curve between exercise volume and cardiovascular health benefit? (2) are there any negative side effects of exercise? and, (3) can you overdose on exercise? This talk will address current data in relation to cardiac dysfunction and damage associated with taking large acute doses of exercise.

Screening Athletes to Avoid Sudden Cardiac Death - a talk by Dr David Oxborough, Clinical Cardiac Physiologist and Reader in Cardiovascular Physiology, Liverpool John Moores University.

Sudden cardiac death (SCD) in a young, seemingly healthy, athlete is a devastating event with current data suggesting that between 1: 40,000 and 1: 100,000 athletes will die from an inherited cardiac disorder. In response to these tragic events, pre-participation cardiac screening has now become mandatory for many sporting organisations across the globe with the aim of identifying those athletes at risk. The athlete’s heart responds to exercise through physiological adaptation, however this normal response often creates a diagnostic challenge when attempting to differentiate from inherited cardiac disease. This talk will present the current data on SCD in athletes, highlight the conditions that are responsible and demonstrate how decades of research into the athlete’s heart have helped to improve the sensitivity and specificity of cardiac pre-participation screening.

Thursday 22

18:00 - PUBLIC TALK - The criminalization of inter-racial sex and white male suicide in South Africa, 1950-1985 : A public lecture by Susanne M. Klausen, Professor of History, Carleton University, Ottawa

Upon winning power in 1948, the National Party (NP) immediately set out to end miscegenation in South Africa. The NP proclaimed that a central tenet of proper white sexuality was avoidance of sexual contact with people of different “races.” Many men ignored this injunction and the new government placed primary responsibility for miscegenation on them – white men who lacked “color consciousness.”

In 1950 the NP government passed the Immorality (Amendment) Act that criminalized extra-marital sex between whites and other races. The Act unleashed the police and courts to punish men who persisted in having sex with black women and the women with whom they were caught. Tens of thousands of people of all races were prosecuted for contravening the law and the vast majority were white men and their black so-called accomplices. Many served time in prison, though not in equal proportion. Lacking resources required to access legal counsel, more black women than white men went to jail. However, white men were subjected to another, unique type of punishment: intentional shaming by public exposure that accompanied arrest and subsequent trials. For many men, the emotional suffering induced by shaming was so intense they committed suicide, leaving behind families forced to carry their shame.

This public lecture by Professor Susanne M. Klausen, Professor of History at Carleton University in Ottawa and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow, will discuss a major lacuna in our understanding of the apartheid social order, namely the meaning and enforcement of compulsory heterosexuality for whites. This study examines the policing of white male heterosexuality and its importance to the apartheid project.

Friday 23

14:00 - PUBLIC LECTURE - Muslims in the West: Is there an Inherent Clash of Values?

In this lecture Professor Weller will dissect “the clash of civilisation” thesis and will critically examine the assumptions of an inherent rift between the West and Islam.

ENTRY: Free but please RSVP via email to cmss-ss@uwa.edu.au

About the speaker

Professor Paul Weller has been at the University of Derby since 1990. His role at the University involves strategically and operationally leading and managing research in the Faculty of Education, Health and Sciences, which is the University’s largest and most research-engaged Faculty. He is also strategically responsible for commercial development in the Faculty, working together with the Faculty’s Innovation and Enterprise Manager. From 2010-2012 he was partially seconded to head up a national Arts and Humanities and Economic and Social Research Council “Religion and Society” Research Programme project on “Religion and Belief, Discrimination and Equality in England and Wales: Theory, Policy and Practice, 2000-2010“.

19:00 - PERFORMANCE - Chinese New Year 2018 : Celebrate Chinese New Year with a special performance from Inner Mongolia

A troupe of 22 exceptional performers from Inner Mongolia Arts University will showcase authentic Chinese Mongolian tradition and folklore in a performance inspired by the vast grasslands and rich culture of their homelands.

This is a rare opportunity to experience in person the famous Mongolian Long Song, Morin Khuur (Horse-headed fiddle), Khoomei (throat singing) and other spectacular music and dance unique to Chinese Mongolian culture. This event for the whole family is brought to you by the Confucius Institute at The University of Western Australia and Penrhos College.

Please join AIIA WA and the Perth USAsia Centre with Alyssa Ayres to launch her new book Our Time has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World.
In Our Time Has Come, Alyssa Ayres considers the role India will play internationally, the obstacles it continues to face, and the implications of its rise for the United States and other nations.
“We are witnessing a country chart its course to power, and explicitly seeking not to displace others but to be recognized among the club of world powers, one in which it believes its membership is long overdue.”
Copies of the book will be available for purchase at a special discounted price of $30.00 from 6.15pm – 6.30pm and between 7.30pm – 7.45pm. Tickets to this event are free but registration is essential.

Tuesday 27

10:00 - FREE LECTURE - The United States and Australia: A Free and Open Indo-Pacific

As the US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, stated last year in his landmark speech in India, the US and its key partners will strive to build mutually beneficial partnerships to safeguard a peaceful and stable Indo-Pacific in the coming years. This event will bring together foreign policy thought leaders from the United States, Australia, India and Japan to explore the future of the Indo-Pacific and what it means to have a free and open Indo-Pacific region. This event is a part of the Australia-US-Indo-Pacific Strategy Conference and is brought to you by the Perth USAsia Centre and the US Embassy in Canberra.Moderated by Professor Gordon Flake, CEO, Perth USAsia Centre.Please note, registrations will open at 9.30am.

This public symposium seeks to provide a strategic forum for policymakers, scholars, and business leaders in the region to grapple with the emergence of the “Indo-Pacific” as a regional construct. The economic rise of ASEAN, China, and India will change the existing global political and economic order. This symposium constitutes an effort to examine policy options for addressing the regional security and diplomatic problems which will emerge from these significant changes in the international system. Please note: Registrations will open at 8.00am.

Tuesday 06

8:00 - WORKSHOP - Static Liquefaction Workshop : This two-day workshop aims to provide demonstrations of the static liquefaction failure mechanism (and triggering process) as it relates to tailings, and the tools used to assess the potential for this behaviour.

This two-day workshop aims to provide demonstrations of the static liquefaction failure mechanism (and triggering process) as it relates to tailings, and the tools used to assess the potential for this behaviour.
This will be achieved through explanation on the use and interpretation of the cone penetration test (CPT); the key tool to assessing the strength and liquefaction susceptibility, and carrying out a static liquefaction laboratory test as a live demonstration during the workshop. Theoretical discussions will be alternated with examples from various tailings failure case histories, to highlight the relevance of the concepts and the meaning of the results.
Mining and tailings consultants, operators of tailings storage facilities, and regulators will find this workshop of interest.

The Centre for Social Impact UWA is excited to host a public lecture with The Hunger Project. Join to hear their stories of impact from the organisation's global CEO Suzanne Frindt.

Suzanne Mayo Frindt is a leadership expert and President and CEO of The Global Hunger Project, a global non-profit organization working to end hunger and poverty by pioneering sustainable, grassroots, women-centered strategies and advocating for their widespread adoption in countries throughout the world.

Suzanne will speak to the importance of transformative leadership throughout The Hunger Project’s work: from the way in which The Hunger Project implements and measures its programs to the way it raises funds and shares its pioneering approaches with others. The Hunger Project is committed to creating a global transformation in the way the world works and invites all of us to engage as active citizens in this process.

The Friends of the UWA Library are delighted to begin the 2018 series of talks with award-winning author, Josephine Wilson. Josephine will talk about her critically acclaimed book Extinctions.

Winner of the prestigious 2017 Miles Franklin Literary Award and Colin Roderick Award, nominated for the 2017 Prime Minister's Literary Awards, and before its publication, the winner of the inaugural 2015 Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, Extinctions has been praised for its humour, poignancy and, from the 2017 Miles Franklin Literary Award judges’ comments, “a compassionate and unapologetically intelligent novel”.

Extinctions is a novel about all kinds of extinction – natural, racial, national and personal – and what we can do to prevent them. Josephine will share her inspiration, perspiration and insights to her work.

UWA Publishing will have copies of her book available for sale.

About the speaker

Josephine began her career in the area of performance. She completed a Masters of Philosophy at Queensland University and a PhD at the University of Western Australia.

She is the co-author of the performance/theatre work The Geography of Haunted Places, and author of the novel Cusp. She has reviewed for Realtime, ArtLink Magazine and for The West Australian, and is a board member for the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts.

Josephine has taught as sessional staff at Murdoch, UWA and Curtin University.

7.00 pm for a 7.30 start

Members: Free, Guests: $5 donation

Friday 23

18:00 - ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING - Autumn Ordinary Meeting of Convocation : Annual General Meeting held in March and September yearly.

The Ordinary Meetings of Convocation are the General Meetings for the University. The Ordinary Meetings of Convocation provide an opportunity to hear the Vice-Chancellor, the Guild President and the Warden of Convocation report on matters relating to the University.

Questions are invited from the audience on any issues pertaining to the University.

All UWA graduates are members of Convocation and are entitled to attend.

Guest Speaker: Mr Patrick Cornish will give a talk on 'UWA: Launchpad for a storyteller'

Perth Upmarket is Perth’s premier quarterly market for original and handcrafted wares. The market brings together over 180 of Perth’s most talented artists, designers, craftsmen and gourmets all under one roof at the University of Western Australia’s Winthrop Hall. Incorporating a dedicated Junior Upmarket and Gourmet section.

Parking and entry are free and the venue is easily accessible.
Three ATMs onsite.

10:00 - OPEN DAY - UWA Health Campus Open Day : Come along to the UWA Health Campus Open Day on Sunday 8 April to find out all about the health related courses on offer. Meet staff and current students, and discover courses available in areas like medicine, biomedical engineering, sports science and psychology.

Are you interested in studying health care or pursuing a career in the fast-growing and in-demand health industry? UWA is holding a Health Campus Open Day on Sunday 8 April for prospective students to find out all about the health related courses on offer in areas like medicine, biomedical engineering, sports science and psychology. You will be able to meet staff, current students and Alumni, listen to information sessions, participate in interactive activities, and discover pathways and career opportunities.

Wednesday 11

8:00 - SEMINAR - 21st International Seminar on Paste and Thickened Tailings : This seminar represents a valuable opportunity for academics, designers, practitioners, consultants and suppliers to discuss best practice, improved methods and technology, all with an emphasis on safety, efficiency and environmental impact.

The Australian Centre for Geomechanics initiated the series of international seminars on Paste and Thickened Tailings (P&TT) in 1999. Since then the seminars have become an influential and respected annual event which provides an excellent forum to bring together tailings and mine waste practitioners from around the world.

The ACG is proud to host the 21st International Seminar on Paste and Thickened Tailings in Perth, 11-13 April 2018. This seminar represents a valuable opportunity for academics, designers, practitioners, consultants and suppliers to discuss best practice, improved methods and technology, all with an emphasis on safety, efficiency and environmental impact.

If you’re getting married in Perth, put Wedding Upmarket in your diary now as we will be showcasing more than 50 handpicked local designers to help you create a bespoke celebration.

Western Australia is home to hundreds of creatives, but sometimes the best wedding suppliers are hard to find. Wedding Upmarket is about connecting brides-to-be with local designers to create a truly custom, personalised event.

Wander around our inspirational styled areas and meet Perth’s finest designers and discuss how they can help you transform all of those online inspiration boards into a reality.

Parking and entry are free and the venue is easily accessible.

When: Saturday 5th May 2018
Time: 10am to 3pm
Where: The University of Western Australia’s Winthrop Hall Undercroft

For more information head to http://weddingupmarket.com.au/
See you there!

Monday 14

8:00 - COURSE - Practical Rock Mechanics in Mining Short Course : This course is designed to develop specific open pit and underground mining geomechanics competencies for mine geologists and engineers so their contribution to mine site geomechanics programmes is enhanced.

This course is designed to develop specific open pit and underground mining geomechanics competencies for mine geologists and engineers so their contribution to mine site geomechanics programmes is enhanced. The course could be of particular benefit to geomechanics personnel with limited practical experience and is applicable to both open pit and underground mining personnel.